Debate contribution: Health: Budget 2025-26 Allocation
Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on .
- MLA
- Mr Mike Nesbitt
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 18 February 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Health: Budget 2025-26 Allocation
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4806354
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for her interest in the core grant scheme. When I took up my post, the scheme effectively did not exist, in that no money had been allocated to it. I was not happy with that position, so, following negotiations with the permanent secretary and others, we identified £1·8 million to go towards the core grant scheme. That is about 50% of what I would have liked that funding to be. The other issue that I had with the core grant scheme was that it had not been reviewed for over 20 years. That meant that any community or voluntary sector group that had come into existence in the past 20 years was precluded from applying for a core grant. I therefore spoke to the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA), which kindly agreed to chair a co-design process, and we now have a new core grant scheme. We have just allocated the £1·8 million. Those in receipt of a core grant have got their letter, and those who were unsuccessful have been offered feedback. I intend to open up the next tranche of core grant funding in the autumn.
194 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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